Free Media Learning Opportunity: Avoiding the "Golden Axe"

This is probably the worst image I’ve posted, likely due to the small market for the irrelevant weapon I’m writing about.

While listening to a talk by Alan Millett on the period before the Korean War, he mentioned a phrase often used there: “Golden Axe.” It was to indicate a pretty, but absolutely useless weapon.

Similarly, I’ve heard General Mattis (of the USMC), while speaking at the OSU Mershon Center for Security Studies, caution the US military to avoid being “dominant, but irrelevant.” I think the “Golden Axe” metaphor fits.

Lastly, Ralph Peters, while speaking at the Pritzker Military Library on December 1, 2007, addressed this issue when he brought up his “Law of A-R-A.” He said that U.S. military weapons must be appropriate to the likely mission, and not “perfect” or too specialized. They must be robust to the extent that they don’t need an army of contractors to be fixed (thereby increasing the operations “tail”). Lastly, they must be affordable, especially in mass production quantity (not so detailed that production cannot be scaled up quickly and exponentially).

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On Life, Strategy, and Running.

Some thoughts and ideas from a US Army strategist – what you’re reading started as a personal blog in 2008, morphed into the now-defunct WarCouncil.org from December 2013 to May 2015 (which became the nucleus of the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis section) – this site’s third incarnation is now a hub for my writings. Hope you enjoy!

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The views expressed on this site (in the essays and all content) are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of West Point, the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the US Government.

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